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Boulder Valley schools adding more iPads, laptops

Early tutoring on technology, paving way for focus on curriculum

By Amy Bounds Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
08/24/2013 05:30:00 PM MDT

Monarch High School science teacher Kristin Donley, at right, helps set up the computers for freshman Shannon Giles, center, and Hannah Hacker during the Technology Academy for freshman on Wednesday at Monarch High School in Louisville.
(
JEREMY PAPASSO
)

Before the first day of school last week, Louisville's Monarch High School offered a two-hour technology academy to its incoming freshmen to get them ready to use laptops in their classes.

Now in the third year of a one-to-one computing initiative, the school requires freshmen, sophomores and juniors to bring laptops to school, providing laptops to students of families that can't afford to buy them. Though Monarch so far is the only school in Boulder Valley to try one-to-one computing, Boulder Valley educational technology manager Kelly Sain said schools are spending more of their technology dollars on Chromebooks and iPads.

"Our real focus is to make sure we get more devices in the hands of our students," she said.

This summer, the district upgraded its wireless networks at middle and high schools so every student and teacher can connect with two devices, eliminating dropped connections and increasing speed.

Sain said the district also is stepping up technology training for teachers, offering workshops over the summer and the Google in Education Rocky Mountain Summit earlier this month. The summit covered using Google apps and other tools in the classroom.

"It was how to make our kids more creators and producers of technology instead of just consumers of technology," she said. "There's a lot of excitement and energy around technology integration in the district."

At Monarch, academic planners, spiral notebooks and even some textbooks are being replaced by laptops.

To get freshmen ready for the first day, several teachers gave them a crash course in the basics, including how to use Google mail and calendars and to create and share documents using cloud technology.

"This is in the cloud, so you can log in to any computer in the world, log in to your Google account and edit your documents," Monarch science teacher Kristin Donley told the students. "It's pretty sweet."

This school year, teachers are adding schoology, an online management system where teachers will post assignments, tutorials and texts. Schoology's private discussion boards, which is similar in format to Facebook, can be used for class discussions.

"Classrooms will be a truly blended environment," said Donley, who led the technology academy. "Students will have 24-hour access."

Teachers also used the session as an opportunity to make sure students could log in to their accounts and fixed password issues for those who couldn't connect.

"We try to get glitches out of the way so teachers can concentrate on the curriculum," Donley said.

About 85 percent of the freshman attended the voluntary technology session.

Freshman Bella Quinn said the session was a good introduction to using Google. Having a laptop, she added, should make staying organized easier.

Added classmate Chloe Carlstrom, "It's easier to keep everything on one place instead of having to keep track of a bunch of papers."

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